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And then she tried to disguise her thought by saying to herself that there were no girls in Ashurst who were not "suitable." "Good-evening," some one said gayly. It was Mr. Forsythe, who had come so quietly along the path, dark with its arching laburnums and syringas, she had not heard him. "Oh," she said, with a little start of surprise, "I did not know we were to see you to-night.
Somebody had once planted syringas, and snowballs, and lilacs along the inside of the line of pepper trees, and they had grown extravagantly and were an impenetrable screen, even without the sweeping pepper trees from the road. It hadn't been lived in for years, and it was well on in decay, being made of wood, but the situation was perfect for The Open Arms.
Sometimes one of them would try her front door, and then, with a bridling toss of the head, express that she had forgotten locking it, and slip round to the kitchen; but most of the ladies made their way back at once between the roses and syringas of their grassy door-yards, which were as neat and prim as their own persons, or the best chamber in their white- walled, green-shuttered, story-and-a-half house, and as perfectly kept as the very kitchen itself.
Without, the scene, beheld by the clear moonlight, had the beauty peculiar to the garden-ground round those old-fashioned country residences which, though a little modernized, still preserve their original character, the velvet lawn, studded with large plots of flowers, shaded and scented, here to the left by lilacs, laburnums, and rich syringas; there, to the right, giving glimpses, over low clipped yews, of a green bowling-alley, with the white columns of a summer-house built after the Dutch taste, in the reign of William III.; and in front stealing away under covert of those still cedars, into the wilder landscape of the well-wooded undulating park.
When I was a little girl, and lived in Hillsboro with my grandparents, there were two Decoration Days in every year. One was when all we school-children took flowers put to the cemetery and decorated the graves of the soldiers; and the other was when the peonies and syringas bloomed, and grandfather and I went alone to put a bouquet on the grave of old Jedediah Chillingworth.
The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path.
But when I go back to Aunt Jane's garden, I pass through the front yard and the back yard between rows of lilac, syringas, calycanthus, and honeysuckle; I open the rickety gate, and find myself in a genuine old-fashioned garden, the homely, inclusive spot that welcomed all growing things to its hospitable bounds, type of the days when there were no impassable barriers of gold and caste between man and his brother man.
As they walked along the narrow paths Susie showed him where the seeds were already planted, and told him what she thought she would have in the other beds. "This is phlox," said Susie, leading Uncle Robert by the hand; "and marigolds are here, and sweet peas over there by the fence. That place between mother's garden and mine is filled with rosebushes, syringas, and hollyhocks."
And do it she did. Some way the house did get cleaned. "After a fashion," Elizabeth said. And the garden was made. Chilian and Eunice trimmed up roses. Cynthia and Miss Winn planted seeds. There were always some things that wintered over sweet Williams, lilies of various sorts, pinks, laurels, some spiræas, snowball and syringas, hosts of lilacs that made a fragrant hedge.
Morning dawned with the sweet twittering of birds, the breath of syringas and roses, and a faultless sky. It was a joy to live. Hubert was out for an early ride, and his black horse Sahib's satin coat shone brightly in the morning sunlight.
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